Disclaimer:

All information provided is for general reference and is not to be substituted for actual medical advice. We assume no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions contained in the content of this article. We do not provide medical advice, only generalized information based on what evidence has shown and every case story referenced is an individual experience with several nuances and within the context of the client’s needs and values. Your experience is your own and you are welcome to consult with your chosen care team and cross-reference any information contained in this article and accompanying videos on our channel. Furthermore, we assume no liability for omissions or errors in any of the content from third-party information linked within this article. Third party websites and references could discontinue at any time at the discretion of the creator.

If you're planning a natural birth then you are going to want to know the 26 Essential Tips for True Natural Birth Planning, and in this article I will cover each one. You can also go deeper by checking out the entire playlist on my YouTube channel, where I have created a deep-dive masterclass on each of these 26 Tips.

In this article I will be going DEEP into all 26 Essential tips, but first, if you are NEW to the community and are not familiar with the Natural Birth Traps, the Empowered Birth Method, and don't know who I am, then I've included a brief introduction below. If you’ve already been following us on social media or this website for a while, then feel free to jump ahead.

Also, this blog is a choose your own adventure, just like everything else at Empowering Moms. You have 3 Paths to take, depending on your learning style or time constraints…

Path 1: The Surface Skimmer🩴— If you only have a few minutes to spare, or you just don’t have the energy to dive into a long article, this path will help you get the overall feel of it. Simply glance over the headlines in bold, dark blue text, and read any relevant sections you want to know more about.

Path 2: The Casual Swimmer🩱— If you have a bit more time, or you want the overall summary of the article, this path will help you learn what you need to while skipping the “fluff” in between. Read the bold text in each section and you’ll have everything you need to know.

Path 3: The Deep Diver🤿— If you like to know EVERYTHING then simply follow the traditional path and read the article as a whole.

Bonus Path: The Treasure Seeker👑— If you’re a serious student who likes to go beyond just ONE article and get all the deeper layers, including references and additional resources, then look over each section and click any links that speak to you. The deeper you go, the more you’ll uncover!

So now that you know your paths, let’s get into the basics! 

What is a Natural Birth Trap?

Throughout this article and the other content on this site and our social media channels, you will find references to the Natural Birth Traps, which is a term I coined back in 2022.

So what are Natural Birth Traps?

These are the things that undermine your confidence in planning a True Natural Birth.

You end up getting tricked. You end up getting pushed into interventions you weren't expecting. And because of the way that our birth culture and medical system has taught you, you fall into these without realizing it.

These traps are sneaky, because they follow a lot of the conventional, mainstream birth education and advice, which means you often won't realize you fell into a trap until it's too late. Now, I have talked a little bit about this inside of my book "Your Empowered Birth", however in addition to that I've also created multiple lists of these traps that you can grab off of my Freebies page. Each mini list contains an overview of the common traps, including Natural Birth Traps, Cesarean Traps, Pain Traps, things you DON'T want to put in your birth plan, and many more. You can get access here.

I will also be laying out the secrets of my signature Empowered Birth Method throughout this article, as well as share case stories, personal experiences both as a mom AND a birth coach, and I'll tell you how to go even DEEPER into your learning so that you can avoid falling into these traps and getting tricked out of your natural birth.

Why Empowered Birth Education Is Different

All right, so why do you want to pay attention and take your time with this article?

Well, first of all, a lot of birth education gets this wrong, and sometimes they get it right, but there's a piece missing. And I'm committed to you having a True Natural Birth and definitely an Empowered Birth.

If you've just stumbled upon this article and are not familiar with the Empowered Birth Method, I encourage you to check out our True Natural Birth Starter Guide, where I laid out the overview of True Natural Birth vs the Mainstream version of Natural Birth that often leads to trauma, pain, and unnecessary interventions. I also share the biggest mistakes you can make as a first-time mom, a seasoned mom, and even a VBAC mom, AND I give you the blueprint to understand and apply the Empowered Birth Method itself!

You'll also find powerful case stories, links to our social media and partnership sites, and you'll get to explore more targeted resources through our "choose your own adventure" format of the guide itself. It's fun, it's easy to follow, and it will help you plan and get your natural birth no matter your time or your budget!

About Me

So who am I first of all to tell you this?

Well, my name is Carly Bonderud and I'm a childbirth educator, coach, and author of "Your Empowered Birth".

I started off as a birth advocate for a number of years and was a rally coordinator for Improving Birth, supporting my dear friend, Dawn Thompson before I even realized that I would one day be creating my own Empowered Birth Movement!

You see, I had been a “star student” with my first pregnancy and I’d been determined to avoid the horrors that I’d seen on TV, in movies, and through my formal education. I’d been terrified of birth for many years because people kept saying how painful it was, how I’d be “begging” for the epidural, and that I needed to “leave my dignity at the door”.

I didn’t want ANY part of that, so when I found myself pregnant in 2012 I set out to learn all I could on how to have a relatively pain-free birth at home, where no one would touch me without my express permission. This led to me choosing a midwife and consuming birth education for all 9 months…unfortunately, while I had an encyclopedia’s-worth of natural birth education I didn’t recognize that I was about to fall into some deep psychological traps, which ultimately led to me being “risked out” of homebirth.

I managed to escape the scissors and the scalpel, but not without having to fight the whole time, and that entire experience had left me shaken and disillusioned. I wanted to know how it had happened that someone as skeptical, educated, and stubborn as I was had been so easily manipulated into the hospital, and that’s when I found Improving Birth, learned exactly what I was missing, and reclaimed my power with my second baby 2 years later.

Of course, it wasn’t enough for me to just reclaim my birth experience and get that do-over. I also wanted to warn other moms so they wouldn’t have to experience what I’d learned the hard way, and that was when I started planting the seeds that would one day grow into the Empowering Moms brand!

Empowered Birth Success Stories

Since 2014, I have helped moms who have been considered high risk go on to plan and get their own True Natural Birth experiences, completely hands-off if they want it, with them in the driver's seat.

These women are over 35.

These women have been told that they are “too fat”.

They've been told they are “too old”.

They've been told that they “don't go into labor on their own”.

And they've been told that their C-sections were absolutely 100% “necessary” later for them to realize that actually they weren't. (They just fell into those Natural Birth Traps that I mentioned.)

You can check out more of my story and the case stories of these amazing women inside “Your Empowered Birth”. It is on Amazon and it's also in the playlist on my YouTube channel.

I’ve also included 2 of my favorite case stories inside the Starter Guide. One is the story of the mom who beat the odds, Jenni. If you aren’t familiar with the story of the woman who kicked my butt and helped me co-found Your Empowered Birth Academy, then here’s the summary:

She had an unassisted hospital VBAC back in 2022, after emotionally healing from a traumatic birth that had her almost give up on ever having another child. Then she found me (or rather, I found her in a local mom group) and insisted on taking my classes and learning all she could from me.

We put together a series of free mini challenges over 10 days, called the Empowered Birth Workshop, and ran them live in my Facebook group in 2021. These workshops became the baseline foundation for moms in my community to finally get the context around the mainstream birth education and WHY it hadn’t prevented their traumatic inductions and c-sections.

Many women went on to plan homebirths, VBACs, and heal from their past traumatic births thanks to what I taught within those free workshops, and a few of those women even went on to work with me at a deeper level inside my group coaching program, as well as hire me as their virtual doula.

That leads to the second story of Rebekah, who arrived in our community during our second Empowered Birth live workshop in June. She was determined to have a VBA2C, after having had a traumatic first induction turned c-section at only 18 years old, and later manipulated out of her VBAC with her second child a few years later.

Rebekah found the workshop so helpful that a week later she emailed me with her birth plan, asking me to look it over. After seeing some things she could tweak in her plan I got on a call with her and we discussed what her DREAM birth would be. She confessed that she wanted to birth at home, but no midwife in her area attended homebirth, so she had assumed she had no options.

This is when I pointed out that babies are born in cars or unintentionally born at home all the time, and that if she wanted to labor at home as long as possible there WAS a possibility that she COULD get her wish and have a homebirth. I shared the story of my former rally co-coordinator Christine, and how she’d been told she was “not allowed” to birth at home too, and then when her baby was coming faster than she could get to the hospital the midwife had magically changed her mind about Christine being “not allowed” after all.

In Rebekah’s case, however, she chose unassisted birth for her own reasons, and I attended her as a virtual doula and coached her for 3 months so that she and her partner were confident enough to do it themselves AND know when to call in medical support if they needed it. Given she was only 5 minutes away from the hospital, this worked for them, and Rebekah reclaimed her power.

Go Deeper With the Empowered Birth Method

These are just some of the stories of the moms who chose Empowered Birth, and you can be one of them! The resources on our website and through social media are designed to help you just as they helped the moms in my community, and there are 3 main steps:

Step 1: Watch the Reset Your Mindset for Empowered Birth Mini Challenge

This deep dive set of masterclasses is the foundational piece that is often MISSING from typical birth education. You see, we live in a society that has been under the medical model of birth for multiple generations, and this has led to a lot of fear and misinformation being perpetuated.

(Where do you think your fears of “something going wrong” came from?)

But what if I told you that was only part of the story, and that there is some missing context that would help you release those fears? That’s what this challenge addresses, and once you go through it you won’t be as susceptible to falling into the Fear Traps.

Step 2: Read “Your Empowered Birth”

I wrote this book initially because I could see that the same social conditioning was often embedded in traditional education and within the birth community, where moms would often ask a question, get an answer, and then keep coming BACK with MORE questions. This creates reliance on “experts”, but as you’re going to discover in this article, relying on other people to tell you what to do and how to birth is exactly why so many births don’t go to plan. I’ve given you the mindset shifts AND the map to plan and get your Empowered Birth, and it’s almost as good as me coaching you directly!

Step 3: Go through Your Empowered Birth Workshop

As mentioned before, this workshop is what has helped moms in my community get past their fear and plan the birth they REALLY want. There will be additional references within this article where I tell you about what’s in this signature workshop. What you need to know for now though is that it’s FREE, it’s jam-packed with strategies and birth education, and every mom who has ever gone through it has become 10 times MORE likely to achieve a hands-off birth experience if they want it, and definitely don’t let others dictate their birth choices anymore.

If you're already familiar with these resources, then you will find even MORE value in what I share with you in this article, because each one is an additional piece that fits into the Empowered Birth System. Think of these as your supplementary education. We're almost to the end of the introductory content, but first, this article comes with a special gift!

Get Your BONUS Treasure!

Before we get started, I just want to let you know that this article started off as a quick list of birth planning tips. Be sure to grab it as your easy reference guide!

You don't even have to put in your e-mail.

All you have to do is click the picture and it will pop up as a PDF and you can download it directly to your own Google Drive which you can then keep forever. It's mobile friendly AND it contains the embedded links to EVERY Deep-Dive Masterclass in this series!

As I said, I am committed to you having a True Natural Birth, whether you work with me any further or not, or get any of my products.

I believe that information should be accessible to everyone regardless of their budget or time constraints, and so I have made it my mission to ensure that every piece of information I put out follows my Rule of 3 and Choose Your Own Adventure formula. This basically means I have 3 Paths for you to learn. You can skim the bold text in the article, read the whole thing, or take the Deeper Dive by also following the relevant links in each section.

The deeper you go, the more treasures you'll uncover!

All right, that pretty much covers the basics, now let's get started!

The 26 Essential Tips For Planning and Getting Your

True Natural Birth

We're diving right into the essential tips now, and I'm going to take a moment to tell you...most of what you've been taught to do to plan a natural birth leads to the mainstream version of "natural birth", NOT the real thing.

Think of it like this: You are craving organic ice cream, but when you get to the store you can't really figure out which is organic and which is the fake version because all the pictures seem to look the same. So you ask someone who works there where the real ice cream is, and they randomly point to a container without actually reading the label.

It says "Ice Cream", so at least it's not "Frozen Dessert", right? But then you look closer and there are STILL ingredients you can't pronounce!

This is what happens when you're looking at the mainstream natural birth tips, and even worse, sometimes you don't even GET the ICE CREAM, but instead it's the preservative-laden Frozen Dessert you were trying to avoid!

Essentially, what you want when planning a natural birth is to aim for a PHYSIOLOGICAL birth...the problem is that mainstream birth culture and our medical system doesn't know how to support that.

Therefore, to GET it requires you to do things differently than what most people will tell you, and to also be aware of the multiple traps that you could fall into as a mom seeking natural birth education. So strap in, because I'm going to lay out each of these 26 True Natural Birth Planning Tips!

Essential Tip #1: Hire the Right Care Provider

You need to choose your care provider very carefully.

Most care providers do not know what True Natural Birth is. They haven't seen it. And even midwives have their hands tied.

So when you're planning a True Natural Birth, you need to come at this as the Birth Consumer.

There are tips in the Starter Guide on how to be the Birth Consumer. Additionally, inside our FREE Empowered Birth Workshop I go into this inside of Module 5 as well as inside the accompanying E-book "How to Hire Your Care Provider". If you want to learn more, click the picture below to learn about what is covered in this module, as well as the rest of the workshop!

 Which leads to ...

Essential Tip #2: Beware the “Medwife” in Disguise

Not all midwives are created equal.

In fact, I found this out the hard way when I was planning my first birth, and wound up getting manipulated right out of my homebirth and into the hospital I had been trying to avoid.

See, what a lot of moms don't understand is that the title of midwife has been appropriated by the medical system. This is why legislation and licensure of midwives is a hot-button issue and this is also why not every birth worker agrees to be registered under government systems. It’s not that they’re inexperienced or “dangerous”, but because the traditional birth attendants who stay OUT of the system know what is lost if they were to follow the “rules”.

Because unfortunately within our culture of fear and misinformation, and our profit and convenience driven society, a lot of midwives end up having their hands tied, and some are not able to practice exactly the way that they want to, based on their insurance.

Others are “medwives” in disguise who actively enforce that system. If you haven't heard that term before, let me just tell you, it's basically like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

They say that they support natural birth, but then you get to a certain point and they're already trying to do “natural” methods to induce you, with the ultimate goal of pushing you through the same medical system that you're trying to avoid.

So you need to be careful, and you need to recognize that not all midwives are created equal, and hiring the wrong one can cost you the birth experience you wanted.

Which leads to...

Essential Tip #3: Avoid Getting Tricked Out of Homebirth

Planning a home birth does not necessarily mean that you're going to get a home birth.

I fell into this trap too.

I thought that I was doing everything right.

I'd hired a midwife.

I'd hired a doula.

I'd taken the childbirth classes.

And I said to myself, “I'm gonna have a home birth.”

But I didn't recognize that the midwife practice that I was going to was also heavily medicalized, and at 35 weeks I was told my baby was too small. Which then led to them saying that I couldn't have a home birth anymore…

Which then led to a lot of fear and anxiety as I'm trying to reconcile my birth plan with going to the hospital…

And later finding out that I could have had a home birth all along.

But because of these restrictions that I didn't know anything about, my midwife's hands were basically tied, and they couldn't tell me anything.

So you need to be really careful, because when you're planning a home birth there's something called being “risked out”. And unfortunately, a lot of the time that you're risked out of home birth, you actually could have had one. It's just that there's a whole bunch of red tape and your midwife either can't or won't fight it for you.

This is why I teach inside of my Empowered Birth Method how to get around those loopholes. I discovered this dark secret when I was a birth advocate and also pregnant with my second baby, and it was in that moment when I realized that even if you hire a midwife, if the hospital she works in happens to be hostile toward moms who want to avoid a natural birth, then there's going to be a bigger "fight" during labor.

In fact, there are often things midwives just aren't "allowed" to tell you, which is why I'm here to fill in that gap. I was taught to read between the lines, and that allowed me to recognize what my options REALLY were when my homebirth almost didn't happen due to a stalled labor.

You see, hospital birth is simply a homebirth transfer, and if you look at the "heroic" stories of women who unintentionally birthed at home, you start to question whether those restrictions on who is "allowed" to birth at home actually hold any weight.

My favorite examples of this are when I find stories of moms who birthed at home even with “risk factors”, including one of my own past students Claire Sherman, who also founded Shinespace Parenting. Claire had wanted a homebirth with her first baby, but she’d also wanted the “best of both worlds” because she has Type 1 Diabetes.

She’d hired a midwife AND an OB, but while her midwife had been supportive of Claire’s plan to birth at home, her OB had chipped away at her confidence by telling her all of the things that could “go wrong” and essentially scaring Claire right into an induction and traumatic c-section.

Fortunately Claire found the Empowered Birth Community as she was recovering postpartum, and a few years later, after going through the Empowered Birth Workshop and following Jenni’s Empowered Birth journey as her blueprint, Claire birthed an 11lb baby at home!

My thoughts are that every labor starts at home, and therefore hospital birth is NOT the default setting but a cultural and societal invention that has only existed since the late 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution forced people into the cities and midwives became a scarce resource. That means that if you labor at home as long as possible, you could simply choose NOT to leave your home, and if you are also confident enough to birth unassisted IF you needed to, then you will feel SAFER laboring at home even without calling the midwife.

As mentioned before, midwives often have their hands tied, and if they are required to follow certain rules around who is “allowed” to birth at home and how long you are “allowed” to be in labor before they have to transfer care, then that can back you into a corner.

Do you keep your midwife there and risk the possibility of transferring to the hospital just because of “policy”, OR do you call in that support at the last minute when they have no other option BUT to catch your baby or assess you after you’ve caught them yourself?

This was the choice I had been faced with in 2016 when my labor had stalled out after 24 hours, and once I discovered I could labor on my own, that's when the game changed for me!

Of course, it helps to have your partner on board, and that leads into…

Essential Tip #4: Train Up Your Birth Partner Beyond the Birth Classes

Your birth partner may not know how to support you.

Even if you're taking your partner to class with you (or a family member/friend if you don't have a romantic partner or for whatever reason they're not available) what you need to understand is that these classes, even if they are supposed to be geared towards your partner, may not teach them everything that they need to know.

Most hospital birth classes teach you what to expect in the hospital, which then reinforces the idea that birth is a medical event.

If you go the home birth route and you're taking classes by doulas or independent childbirth educators, they may have a little bit more in what they teach your partner for advocacy, but they're not addressing the underlying fears.

So you're sitting in class and you're thinking…

“I'm not going to induce. There's no way. It's only a 1% risk of this happening or 0.2% chance of this happening.”

But your partner is scared and will start to freak out.

Or maybe it's that you're learning something and you're taking it through your lens of your education, your values, your preferences. Your partner is watching the same material, they're taking the same course you are, but there's a mismatch in how they're interpreting the information versus how you are.

So even if your partner reads a whole bunch of books or takes the classes or watches the videos, they're still filtering it through their own lens, not yours.

The Empowered Birth Method basically teaches you how to become the Birth Visionary so that you can enroll your partner in your version of Empowered Birth, not theirs.

It’s a strategy that I’ve used many times to help my clients and the moms in my community to get a reluctant or completely resistant spouse or family member to support their desire for a homebirth, as well as help them get past any hidden fears that they may not have addressed.

Because otherwise, your partner is going to be completely clueless wherever you're giving birth, whether it's home or hospital.

Trust me on this one.

I have been coaching a lot of partners and the questions that they ask are things that could technically be covered in a childbirth class, but for whatever reason, they still can't wrap their heads around it because they haven't been immersed in it.

So you, as the Birth Visionary, need to be able to work with your partner, and that is part of what the Empowered Birth Method does.

I teach you those skills through multiple different formats.

You can take the Do-It-Yourself Path and seek out the Partner Support masterclasses on my YouTube channel, OR take advantage of our Self-Study program “Your Empowered Birth Workshop”, which gives you the basic overview of partner support in Module 6.

In this module I go over the 5 Categories of Partner Resistance and how to address each one, and I also share with you the secret hidden fears that many partners have that they may not address.

In addition to the Workshop, there is a deeper level of training for partner support inside Your Empowered Birth Academy, as well as our Get Your Partner On Board In 5 Days Or Less Mini Challenge.

You can access everything if you enroll in Your Empowered Birth Academy, or if you want access to ONLY the module on partner support or the mini challenge, you can reach out to the team and we’ll assist you further.

Our courses automatically are designed to help you get YOUR partner to support you, but first YOU need to go first and face your fears. Otherwise, how can you hold theirs?

Again, the resources here at Empowering Moms will help you, so if you want to know more about getting your partner to better support you in your birth plan, then please reach out. We are happy to assist you.

Of course, to ensure your partner feels safe and can fully trust birth, it does help to have some backup support from someone who intimately understands birth in many forms, and that’s why you also need to know about…

Essential Tip #5: Hire the Right Doula

Your doula may not be the right fit for you.

This is often surprising to a lot of people when they're hiring a doula.

They think that we all basically operate the same way.

We come in, we're the glorified hand-holder.

We tell you about birth and we help you.

But the truth is that doulas are all human first and then we're experts second, and there are some things that we can't even tell you based on whether we were certified under an organization that says we're not allowed to interfere, or if you happen to have one of those hospital doulas that was assigned to you from the hospital.

(This is technically just a nurse or someone else hired by the hospital who comes in and puts on the doula hat, and they have to adhere to the hospital's protocols.)

You want to hire somebody outside of the medical system when it comes to supporting you in your birth.

You need somebody who is going to be willing to stand up for you.

Somebody who's also gotten over their trauma and their fears around True Natural Birth.

Because your goal is to have a True Natural Birth, right? So you don't want to follow the mainstream advice when it comes to hiring your doula.

You really want to be focused on what qualities you're looking for and what kind of support you're looking for and why you're hiring one in the first place.

If they are more hands-on and you're someone who doesn't like to be watched, like in my case, then it's just not going to be a good match.

Even if you really like them.

Even if you get along great.

Even if they seem very knowledgeable.

If you are in that birthing space and they're coming in trying to do all of their techniques, that can slow your labor.

Now, if you want to know more about that, I do go deeper inside of “Your Empowered Birth”, and there are also exercises in that book to help you figure out whether your doula is truly right for you or whether you even want a doula in the first place. I’ve also created a guide with questions to ask before you hire your doula, which you can access either through the Empowered Birth Toolkit OR inside of Your Empowered Birth Workshop.

Of course there is a trap that many moms fall into when they hire a doula, and that leads to the next tip…

Essential Tip #6: Don’t Rely on Others to Advocate for You

Your partner (and your doula) may not be able to advocate for you.

For whatever reason, sometimes partners get scared.

And if you're also in a hostile environment, your partner may be not able to advocate

for you specifically because they're asked to leave the room or are unable to accompany you at the hospital the whole labor.

This is when a lot of moms panic. If they learn that their partner can’t take time off work, or that they are unable to find reliable childcare for their other kids at home, this can push a lot of them into considering induction to control their birth around their partner’s schedule.

Unfortunately that’s NOT how induction actually works, and just because one schedules an induction date doesn’t mean they’ll be able to induce on that same day, OR that the induction will go fast. Not only that, but induction completely destroys the natural birth plan.

Another scenario is if you’re in a situation where your partner is asked firmly to LEAVE the room, and they aren’t aware of their rights, OR they simply went to the bathroom while you were laboring. Whatever the case, they are no longer there to protect you.

Now this is not ideal.

And this is why with the Empowered Birth Method, we're really careful about choosing the right care provider and the right environment.

I also advise all of my clients that if they're going to go in alone, they need to have that protection AND know how to hold their ground until their partner can stand beside them.

One of my clients, Didi (name changed) , decided that she wanted to have a completely unassisted VBAC after three cesareans.

The hospital was not going to support this, and she and her partner also had unreliable childcare.

So when she chose to transfer to the hospital, she was doing so with the knowledge that she would be completely on her own, advocating for herself against getting the C-section while her partner was at home with their boys until he could locate someone to watch them.

He was absolutely beside himself because he didn't know what to do, and he couldn't protect her.

However, because of what I had taught them over the course of six weeks, she was able to stay confident until her partner could join her later on the next morning.

You need to understand that there may be points, especially during appointments or if you happen to be at the hospital before your partner, or for whatever reason you're on your own, that you need to still be able to advocate for yourself.

You cannot completely rely on your partner.

The other thing you need to understand is that if your partner also hasn't had the proper education, you expect them to stand up against the medical system, but they become complicit in it.

This is what happened with me.

I didn't want to get on the hospital bed to birth.

I wanted to be leaning over the bed.

I wanted to be squatting down.

I didn't want anybody to touch me.

My (former) partner comes back from the bathroom and he's like, “Oh where do you want her?” and picked me up and put me on the bed.

So you need to understand that in a very stressful situation, if your partner is coming back from the bathroom or something, they may suddenly be walking in like, “Well, what do I do?”

You’re focused on labor and unable to communicate, so they just do their quick instinct of asking, “Well, what do you want me to do?” to the care provider.

And then they follow suit.

Because unfortunately, this is the dynamic.

The medical system is the “expert”, and you're just supposed to go with their flow.

But the Empowered Birth Method teaches you how not to do that and how to have those conversations with your partner so that they know that if that situation did come up, they would be able to override that social programming and be like, “Nope, I'm taking charge here. I'm going to make sure that this doesn't happen.”

I go much deeper into how to do this inside Your Empowered Birth Academy, within the advanced Birth Advocacy modules of the course.

The key to success is to ensure your fears are under control, and to also practice saying no to your care provider BEFORE you go into labor. Not only will this practice keep you confident, but you will also learn how to spot red flags earlier on, so that IF you happen to have a care provider who was never intending to support your birth plan, you can fire them.

Of course, being able to advocate for yourself will only work as far as the type of environment you are birthing in, and there are some hospitals that just don’t support birth plans and even force unwanted interventions. This leads to…

Essential Tip #7: Choose the Right Hospital (or Backup Hospital)

The hospital you choose determines your birth experience.

This is something that I wish that I had known with my first baby, but the truth is that most hospitals do not know how to facilitate a True Natural Birth.

And some are more hostile towards pushback than others.

A hospital is only as good as the culture that it has. So if there's a hierarchy where somebody up at the top is dictating everything and they're going by profit, convenience and liability, and they don't support True Natural Birth…

They don't trust it…

They prefer everybody just have a C-section…

“Get them in, get them out”…

It's going to trickle down.

Every time you have a hierarchy, that is an imbalance of power, and people aren't able to call others out.

It just doesn't work.

So you're going to want to be doing your research ahead of time.

Even if you're having a home birth, I highly suggest that you do this because at least then you know what backup hospitals you could go to if you chose to switch.

If you were like, “I changed my mind, there's something going on. I want a little bit more medical support and I'm going to this hospital.”

Once you know what the environment is going to be like, you can plan ahead for that.

With my client, "Didi", she knew that she was going into a hostile environment, and she also knew that she had the tools that I'd given her as an advocate so that she was able to stand firm.

She was actually able to get them to change their mind at certain points based on how confident she was in what she wanted and how she was absolutely refusing to play by their rules.

And instead, she got them to start playing by hers.

This is another piece of the Empowered Birth Method, and if you want to know more, I highly recommend that you go and get my Empowered Birth Toolkit, which has a Birth Advocacy Report.

It tells you about the five different types of medical professionals, and I'm not talking about whether they're a midwife, a nurse or an OB, I'm talking about their psychology.

See, a lot of the reasons why your care provider is resisting is because they're afraid and they're trying to control for that fear.

Anytime that there's control, it's based on fear.

The trick is to get them out of their fear and the Birth Advocacy Report will help you to do that.

You see, even medical professionals are not immune to bias and misinformation when it comes to birth, and unfortunately many people forget this and assume that because they have credentials behind their name that they must know what they’re talking about.

This leads to many people taking their recommendations and advice at face value, and often these same types of professionals will also write articles or other materials that reinforce their ideas without seeing the whole picture, which leads to…

Essential Tip #8: Avoid Mainstream Birth Books

Your reading material matters.

If you are reading books that say “This is how natural birth works”, but it's written by doctors, and it has a very medical lens to it, it's probably not going to be as helpful as if you are reading a book from somebody who's actually attended true physiological natural births.

One of my favorites to read is “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” by Rachel Reed.

It goes into the whole depth of what physiological birth looks like, and why the medical system can derail it with their interventions, and how that happens.

Another good one is “The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth” by Henci Goer.

This one, of course, has all the risks and benefits of different interventions.

So in tandem, when you're looking at what the risks and benefits are of each intervention and how it affects natural birth, and then you're also looking at what physiological birth really looks like…

(Which again, “Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage” really goes into depth with…)

Once you understand that, then it's easier for you to recognize that there are not two sides of natural birth or medical birth, and if you go all natural, there's gonna be a problem, but instead recognizing the balance between them.

With the Empowered Birth Method we bring both sides together, and YOU become the Decision Maker. It’s simple…We aim for a True Natural Birth and then we have our backup plans.

So if you do want to bring in intervention, there is a place for that.

There is a time for that.

If you need it, then you should be able to have it.

However, you don't want the Cascade of Interventions.

Unfortunately, if you're reading books that only have birth going one way then you miss the nuance and don’t get the full picture.

And definitely stay away from books where they say that home birth is dangerous and should not happen, because then you know exactly where they're leading you…

Because if you are absorbing the wrong things, you have the wrong education.

Which then affects your mindset…

Which then can perpetuate fears that are maybe not even yours, but can start to get you to doubt yourself…

Which then leads into the Natural Birth Traps and the Fear Traps.

So if the mainstream, “popular” books can lead you into a trap, then how do you find

the RIGHT books? That takes us into…

Essential Tip #9: Add The RIGHT Books to Your Library

Ask doulas what books to read.

Please don't go into the mom groups and ask a bunch of questions about which books to read. Because typically you’ll just get the same generic list of one or two books that everybody knows about.

We already know about “Ina May's Guide to Childbirth”! That one is a staple that a lot of moms will say “Oh this one is really good.”

But what happens is that you're getting a very small sample of what’s out there.

If you've already read that book, where do you go next?

That’s why it’s best to ask doulas, because we're birth junkies!

We love birth.

We're not sitting there and just reading a few books at the end of our pregnancy, to try to get a feel of what birth is going to be like, we're diving deeper. So we know all the different nuances.

And if you really want to know, you can ask me.

I also reference a lot of books within my blog articles, video masterclasses, and even inside of my book “Your Empowered Birth.”

But what you really need to understand is that if you’re relying on mainstream mommy groups to tell you what books to read, you'll probably miss out on the real gems.

Whereas doulas are always hunting for something else, some little secret treasure trove of a library.

Also, be extremely careful when you’re selecting books from your local library!

I've gone into libraries, and I've been looking specifically in the birth section, and I'm like, “None of this stuff is going to help a mom have a True Natural Birth”.

So again, if you're going to be reading, you need to be reading the right things, and a lot of the typical birth books out there are not teaching you things that are going to help you have a True Natural Birth.

They’re just going to perpetuate the Natural Birth Traps that you're trying to avoid.

 Speaking of perpetuating the Natural Birth Traps, that leads us to…

Essential Tip #10: Choose the Right Childbirth Class

Not all natural birth classes teach natural birth.

Now what do I mean by that?

Well first of all, a lot of natural birth classes teach the surface level what to expect.

Labor stages.

Dilation.

How to cope with the pain.

What to expect in the hospital environment.

The policies that the hospital is going to want you to adhere to.

I can tell you right now from having taken a hospital birth class, that did not set me up to have a successful True Natural Birth.

In fact, that led to almost everybody else in that class getting a c-section.

Only one other mom escaped but she had an epidural, she had been induced, and she had forceps and vacuum extraction.

So definitely not the True Natural Birth experience that she wanted.

The only reason I didn't was because I was incredibly skeptical.

I was resistant to all medical intervention.

I was also resistant to being swayed a certain way.

And I was taking outside information from natural birth classes taught by doulas and midwives.

This again still followed a lot of things that, looking back, probably didn't help me very well.

Like advocating for myself.

They just told me about BRAIN, which in itself was helpful, but when you're looking at the benefits and risks of something…

And you don't also have all the education on Informed Consent…

And you aren't also thinking about this critically…

Then what happens is you fall into what I call the Information Loop.

And then you are still deferring to the experts.

You're getting Deformed Consent and Informed Compliance.

And again, I talk about this inside “Your Empowered Birth” on how to sift between good information that will help you have a True Natural Birth, and the stuff that's going to perpetuate the Natural Birth Traps.

There is also a special guide that teaches the Decision Making Framework, which I adapted from Rachel Reed in chapter 1 of her book “Why Induction Matters” and then added my own pieces to it.

You see, you cannot make informed choices if you are still afraid, and unfortunately BOTH times that I attended the “Interventions in Childbirth” classes, I had a terrible anxiety attack with how they were wording things.

We’re taught, for example, to call in interventions when “medically necessary”, and we’re also taught to ask about the risks and benefits, or the “pros and cons” of agreeing to each intervention, however those lists of risks and benefits come from other people who have their own sets of biases and fears. They are more likely to sway you to agree to have an intervention you don’t want or need, “just in case something bad happens”, and that perpetuates fear.

If you truly want to get OUT of that loop, it takes approaching things a different way, and that is why Your Empowered Birth Workshop is not your typical childbirth class, but instead the baseline foundation for you to filter information through without falling into an Information Loop or Fear Trap!

In the very first module (which you can also test out inside the Empowered Birth Toolkit) you will learn how to challenge and release your fears, and in the second module you will learn the ins and outs of True Natural Birth and why it doesn’t follow a linear pattern.

In the third module I go into the Induction Traps, as well as provide additional resources for making decisions, including the Empowered Decision Making Workbook!

I’ve included this workbook inside the toolkit AND inside Your Empowered Birth Workshop, and it will allow you to go beyond the “pros and cons”.

Additionally, if you are considering taking a childbirth class there is another workbook you will want to check out inside the toolkit that will help you decide whether it’s actually worth it to invest in a class, or if you’re better served hiring a better doula or another service you need.

There are many worthwhile courses and birth classes, however you do need to be aware that not every instructor is right for every student, so it’s important to choose wisely.

And speaking of spending money when you don’t need to…

Essential Tip #11: Invest in Your Birth Experience, NOT Baby Gear

You need to be researching your options for birth more than you are researching for baby gear.

We unfortunately live in a very consumer-based society.

You see it in the mom groups all the time…

Where moms are trying to figure out between which stroller…

And which baby carrier…

And which crib…

And which new baby gadget to get…

Or what new thing to get postpartum.

And they're not focusing on what's really important, which are the birth options.

You think that you're researching enough, because people will just tell you what they did with their birth plan (or that it's pointless to make one).

What their doctor recommended.

What's typical.

You go and talk to your care provider, and they say, “Oh yeah, this is the reason why we do this.”

And there's no actual discussion on what happens if you don't.

So you really need to be able to research your options, which again is what I teach with my Empowered Birth Method.

I do have a lot of resources, so make sure you are checking them out on the website, because that is where I put all of my freebie guides…the lists that tell you the things that you really need to know.

I also give you Deep Dive Masterclasses on YouTube.

I give you the overview of how to use the Empowered Birth Method to your advantage.

Not only that, but I also have the Empowered Birth Toolkit.

Now, unlike typical things that you opt into for e-mail newsletters, this is versatile.

So instead of just opening it up once, you're going to want to use this as an ever-evolving resource.

I put things in, I take things out, I put new things in, and I test out what's working.

Not only that, but these are also the same resources that then go into my paid program, Your Empowered Birth Academy, which is also ever evolving.

So you can get the free version where you get this Empowered Birth Toolkit.

You get a few resources, you get to check them out.

You can download them.

They help you get where you want to go.

Or you can get the paid version, which is Your Empowered Birth Academy, and then you get everything.

Everything that I ever create goes into Your Empowered Birth Academy.

It also comes with more direct e-mail support and even a little bit of one-to-one coaching with me or one of my Coaching Queens.

Because I believe that information should be accessible and what I really charge for is more access to me.

So whether you continue to follow this blog…

Binge on videos…

Or you get the Empowered Birth Toolkit…

I just want to remind you at this point that I'm putting out my magic completely 100% with no strings attached.

You can get this information and it can help you move a little bit further on your path to getting a True Natural Birth.

You can still get an Empowered Birth.

And all I ask is that you Pay It Forward.

If you're finding value with this article right now and you're like, “This is amazing,” then

please share it.

Tell other people about this website and the resources here.

Tell other people about the YouTube Channel and my book, “Your Empowered Birth”, and Pay It Forward.

Because I am committed to you having an Empowered Birth.

I'm committed to every mom having an Empowered Birth.

Every birth can and should be a beautiful and empowering experience.

So again, I just want to remind you that I put this out for your own benefit to make sure that you get that beautiful, empowering, True Natural Birth experience.

I will also mention that research can be tricky when you don’t know where to go, and that is why Your Empowered Birth Workshop sets up the baseline education for you so that as you gather the rest of the outside resources or get supplemental education, you are far less likely to get tricked out of your dream birth.

The absolute worst thing you can do is wait until the end of pregnancy to plan your birth, or to get educated on your options, because then you run out of time and you’re far more likely to fall into a trap.

Again, this is what the Empowered Birth Method helps you avoid, and our resources are designed to help you plan your birth from a place of power, so that you don’t settle for less than you deserve.

Because…

Essential Tip #12: Plan Your Birth Like You’d Plan Your Dream Wedding

You need to put more thought into planning your birth than you would into a wedding.

This means that you're going to be wanting to budget for your birth.

I know…

Sometimes out-of-hospital birth options are a lot more expensive.

Insurance companies don't want to cover it or they're not available.

The midwife that's not registered under the medical system will cost something out of pocket.

Doulas are expensive.

Getting a childbirth class that actually helps you can be a little bit of an expense.

Getting the home birth supplies, renting a birth pool, all of this adds up.

However, when you look at the impact of what having a beautiful True Natural Birth

experience can do for you…

When you think about how you're going to feel in your body…

How fast you're going to recover…

How much easier it's going to be for you to navigate postpartum…

How triumphant you're going to feel…

How you're going to avoid that unnecessary C-section…

That unnecessary induction…

All those vaginal exams…

You're going to avoid the conveyor belt that happens in typical hospital births.

Even if you do plan a hospital birth, you can still navigate it because ultimately if you are going in and showing them how True Natural Birth works, that in itself is powerful!

Because a lot of care providers don't see it.

And because they don't see it, they don't trust it.

They can't facilitate it.

As a result, the insurance companies continue not to pay out what you deserve, to have a better care provider who is covered, because they don't do as many interventions.

So if you want to change the way a consumer-based society works, the way to do it is through supply and demand. And the key is the demand.

If you're not demanding it, they're not going to supply it.

So again, you need to recognize as you're planning your birth, this is more important than your wedding day.

So treat it as such.

No, you really don't want to think, “I'd love a home birth. I think I'll do that next time.”

Because what if there is no next time?

What if you go in and you get the most traumatic birth of your life, and it terrifies you

from ever trying again?

You don't deserve that.

So plan your birth right the first time.

Or if you have had a traumatic birth and you're thinking “This is my last chance of having a True Natural Birth. And I hear what you're saying. I want this so badly…”  inside “Your Empowered Birth”, there is a chapter called “How to Heal and Get the Birth You Want the Next Time.” It's Chapter 7.

You're going to want to go through that and do the exercises.

It's almost as good as me coaching you directly.

So again, if you want that, you can go and check it out on Amazon or go into the playlist.

And if you really want more help, you can always sign up for the Empowered Birth Toolkit  and that will get you started on your Empowered Birth Journey.

Now that you understand how important it is to plan your birth carefully, we’re going to address one of the biggest blocks to carrying out that natural birth plan, and that is the looming induction that most moms don’t even realize will be pushed on them once they hit 37 weeks. Which brings us to… 

Essential Tip #13: Remember Your Due Date is a Guess Date

It's not an expiration date.

If you pass your due date or you're approaching your due date, this does not mean anything.

Think of it as your period.

Sometimes you're 28 days on the dot.

Other times you might get it early.

You might get it on Day 26.

Another time it might be 31 days.

I mean, sometimes our cycle just changes and there's no actual explanation for it.

We're still taking care of ourselves.

We're still doing everything right, and it's just that our body needed more time that month or just needed less time.

Well, your baby is on their own timeline, and they may not be ready at 40 weeks.

They may not even be ready at 41 weeks.

It is unfair for the medical system to suddenly slap a time on your birth and say, “You have to give birth by this point or we're gonna have to interfere.” 

With a True Natural Birth you don't want to do that.

So you need to get “due date” out of your head, because it doesn't exist.

If you really need to tell somebody of an idea of when you think your baby is going to arrive so that they can plan ahead for something (Maybe they're coming to stay with you) I highly suggest that you fudge on the date.

Go two to three weeks after your actual due date and tell them that one instead.

That way, they're not going to call you up and be like, “Have you had that baby yet?

And instead, what they're going to do is think, “Oh, well, she's only in her 8th month.”

Meanwhile, you're coming close to the end.

You have your baby.

And even if you went over by 41 weeks or you're at 42 weeks or even 43 weeks, you're feeling good because you know, babies come in their own time.

And I think this is a good point to let you know about three books that you're going to want to read if you are committed to avoiding an induction.

The first one is my absolute favorite, and it goes into all of the details of the different risks and benefits of induction.

It's called “Why Induction Matters” by Rachel Reed.

This is the one that I give to all of my clients, especially when they're trying to avoid an induction, so that they can make sense of the data.

This gives the actual numbers.

So none of that “increase/decrease/triples/quadruples” mess that the medical system

will sometimes tell you that makes things sound scarier than they actually are.

Instead, Rachel Reed really goes into the nitty gritty details and tells you about the research and even anecdotal evidence from what she has experienced when she was a midwife.

The second one is “In Your Own Time” by Dr. Sara Wickham.

This again will tell you about the actual risks of waiting versus the risk of induction and basically also show you how Western medicine controls the stop and start of labor and why this needs to stop.

So once you understand that side of things, then you're going to be even more armed because you're going to see, “Oh, that's why they're doing that, and this is how I can get out of it.”

Finally, the last one is new to the collection and came out earlier this year, after I’d already recorded the original masterclass this article is based off of. It’s part of Henci Goer’s Take Charge of Birth Series and is called “Labor Induction: Why, When, and How”.

I personally had the privilege of reading an advanced copy of this book and as someone who often supports my clients in making their backup induction plans I can tell you that this book is worth adding to your collection.

Henci Goer has gone beyond the scope of what she covered in “The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth”, and the entire book is laid out in a way that is easy to read and will help you break down the actual evidence for induction for everything from big babies to the 39 week Arrive Trial that has allowed too many doctors to justify pushing induction on every mother the second she reaches 38 weeks, under the pretense that induction actually reduces the likelihood of a c-section.

I highly suggest adding these to your reading list if you are concerned about being pressured into an induction for any risk factors, or simply because everyone seems to be getting induced in your community (just hang out in local mom groups and you’ll see it). These three books combined will give you more than enough evidence to keep your mindset strong.

Finally, I will add that induction is one of those major topics I tend to cover in-depth each year, particularly around the holiday season, or what I refer to as Induction Season. You can dive deep into the archives of my YouTube channel and find multiple videos where I cover everything from the actual risks of induction vs waiting (often while reading passages from one of the 3 books already mentioned) to birth advocacy tips on how to say NO to induction.

Additionally, Module 3 of Your Empowered Birth Workshop was specifically designed not only to help you avoid unnecessary interventions, but also to combat the Induction Epidemic and give you the facts and the tools to protect yourself against the scare tactics.

If you get this workshop OR simply sign up for the Empowered Birth Toolkit, I have also included this special guide that will further help you avoid the Induction Traps.

This was originally a handout that I gave to moms who attended local events in my community, and I’ve expanded it to include questions to ask before you agree to an induction as well as 10 reasons you don’t want to induce.

It comes free inside as a book bonus with “Your Empowered Birth”, and you automatically get access within the Empowered Birth Toolkit. I’ve also included it as a bonus resource in Module 3 of Your Empowered Birth Workshop.

The thing you need to understand is that birth is not linear, and we need to stop

controlling it to fit arbitrary timelines. Induction is a very real problem in our birth culture and medical system, and it leads to the justification of other interventions to avoid it. Which is why you also need to be aware of…

Essential Tip #14: Don’t Just “Go With the Flow”

Going with the flow is not a natural birth plan.

When you don’t plan ahead, you can’t go with your own flow, and then you’re stuck.

What tends to happen is that something comes up in the course of your pregnancy or in labor, and you automatically defer back to the experts because it was something you weren't expecting.

This is why the  Empowered Birth Method is different from typical birth classes and typical birth planning.

How it works is that first you aim for your dream birth; the thing that you would just love to have happen, and then you create a safety net and trampoline towards that with your backup plans.

So that it's like, “Okay, and if I get gestational diabetes, I'm not gonna go with the typical course of what the medical system would automatically push me into. I'm not afraid of them pushing me into an induction at 39 weeks if I have gestational diabetes, because I already planned ahead for what I would do if that was the case.”

Same for GBS.

Same for if you have chronic high blood pressure and you notice that it starts to spike.

I mean, these are all things that my dear friend Jenni did when she was planning for her unassisted VBAC in the hospital, and it turned out that it was just what she needed because the medical system had concerns, but she didn't have those same concerns.

Because BEFORE anything even came up at all, she’d already faced her fear, done the research, and made her own plan.

So when you are aiming for your True Natural Birth and then you pull back only as needed, then you're following your own path regardless of what actually happens.

The Write Your Empowered Birth Plan Mini Challenge will help you outline the bigger details of your overall birth plan, while keeping you focused on your Dream Birth so that you can’t be pulled into fear and doubt, while the exercises inside “Your Empowered Birth” focus on the outward conditions to put in place to help you get the right information to make those plans.

Whenever a newly pregnant mom comes to me, the first thing I want to know is what her plan is. If she’s already had one or more disappointing births, we also need to address those past stories so that she can figure out what REALLY happened, not just what she was told, and then she makes her decisions based on what is right for HER.

If you create your birth plan at the start of pregnancy, this protects your interests much better because you aren’t hiring a care provider who dictates your options to you, or risk finding out at the end of pregnancy (when it’s harder to fire them) that they were never going to support your birth plan.

Too many moms wait until their final month to start planning for what they want. Don’t be one of them! The resources here at Empowering Moms are designed to help you plan your birth without fear, AND without falling into the multiple traps that can derail your natural birth.

The templates and checklists on most websites are designed to support the mainstream version of natural birth, and there are hidden Fear Traps of thinking about “something going wrong”.

So make sure you protect yourself by creating a Birth Vision. You can learn more about this inside of “Your Empowered Birth” and I also have a special Write Your Empowered Birth Plan Mini Challenge, which came as a bonus with "Your Empowered Birth". There are also special mini lists on birth plan dos and don’t in our Freebies section.

One of the most devastating things for me as a birth advocate and coach is to see moms putting their birth plan into the mom groups when they’re already close to the end of pregnancy, and I can see all the ways that they’re about to be tricked OUT of that natural birth simply by what’s in their plan.

It was a relief that Rebekah had come to me at 25 weeks, having written out her plan after the Empowered Birth Live Workshop had finished, and then asked me to personally look it over. I had spotted several traps that would have sabotaged her attempts to have her VBA2C, and in the end she got BETTER than she’d ever thought was possible simply because she reached out.

Jenni also had the training to know what she wanted for her birth BEFORE she conceived again. She attributes her careful planning and her backup plans to being part of her success, as well as how she formulated her final version of her birth plan. This template is designed to be used with the Write Your Empowered Birth Plan Challenge, so be sure to get BOTH for best results.

Finally, one word of caution…you need to be careful who you share your birth plans with, because too often you’ll run into another issue…

Essential Tip #15: Ignore the Birth “Horror Stories”

Other people's energy and opinions can derail your plans.

They can start to put their own fears, their own doubts, their own insecurities onto you. 

Which then it makes it harder for you to stay focused.

They can start to give you ideas that start to make you think, “Ohh, maybe I'm doing this wrong. I mean everybody else doesn't really believe in this.”

No, if you're going to share your birth plan it needs to be with somebody who has reverence for your plan.

This is why a lot of my clients come to me.

They share their birth plans and then I am standing for that vision for them.

You need to have at least one person in your corner, preferably your partner, when it comes to your birth plan.

However, if your partner isn't on board, you can always find a trusted friend who loves birth.

Somebody who truly believes in True Natural Birth, that is going to be rooting for you.

You do not want to share your natural birth plan with somebody who just only had C-sections, would never think of having a natural birth, would get the epidural at 4 centimeters, or otherwise would tell you, “Don't be a hero”.

Or somebody who's been so traumatized because they tried to have a natural birth, but they fell into those Natural Birth Traps.

They aren't recognizing that it's a Natural Birth Trap…

And then they go on and they project that onto you.

You really do not want to be sharing your birth plan in the mom groups.

A lot of times when moms do this, they start getting questioned.

“Well, why are you asking for this?”

“Oh, I don't know if you should do that, because what if something goes wrong?"

Then the labor and delivery nurse who thinks she knows everything comes in and says,

“Well, this is why we recommend that. So you really shouldn't refuse that.”

And now there's shame on top of shame on top of shame, even if it's indirect.

And mom is now kind of looking at her birth plan and she's like, “I don't know what I'm doing.”

And then she defers to the experts again.

You don't want to do that.

One of the reasons I first created the Reset Your Mindset for Empowered Birth Mini Challenge was because I could see how all these horror stories were undermining the confidence of first time moms, seasoned moms, and even women who were on the fence about having a baby at all!

I remember all too well those days in my teens and early twenties when I’d vowed I would never get pregnant, not because I didn’t want kids, but because birth had been shown to be traumatic, disempowering, painful, and horrifying!

I knew instinctively that this couldn’t possibly be “natural”, nor did it need to be this way, and when I discovered I was pregnant with my first baby at 26 I finally had to face my fear. I planned that birth experience with careful precision and I blocked out the negative stories, but I hadn’t yet recognized how ingrained the Fear Traps are.

The Reset Your Mindset for Empowered Birth Mini Challenge is the first step to rooting out those old fears and programming that has you believing in those horror stories, while Your Empowered Birth takes things a step further and fully addresses how to create your external environment and protect your new mindset as you plan and get the birth YOU want and deserve to have!

Of course, it’s not so simple to stay strong if you keep doing what most moms are doing when they discover they’re pregnant, and while you DO want to have some support and even talk with moms who understand what you’re going through, you need to be aware of some other traps, which I couldn't fit into this article! Instead, I needed to create 2 parts, and you can read the next piece here, or continue to the end and learn more about how to contact us and get more support for your Empowered Birth Journey!

Connect With Us And Pay It Forward!

If you have an Empowered Birth, and you'd like to share your story, I do take testimonials.

I do take case stories.

I love to hear from my audience.

So make sure that if you do want to connect with me, you just email us at hello@empoweringmomsbirth.com and someone will be there to support you further.

I read all the comments and every email that is sent to me, and I use those questions, stories, and comments to help me in creating MORE resources for you and for the rest of the Empowered Birth Community.

So thank you for getting to the end of this.

Again, if you don't have the Empowered Birth Toolkit, I'm just going to remind you that this is an ever-transforming resource.

It's a file folder, and I put things in, and I take things out.

So I can't even tell you what's in it, except for the Birth Advocacy Report, which is something I always keep in it, just because of how much it helps my clients.

But everything else is interchangeable.

I sometimes put in free videos and challenges, I put in meditations, I put in modules for my actual program, Your Empowered Birth Academy.

I put in little bonus guides…

Things that I'm working on.

Sometimes they're not even fully created yet.

It's just like, “Here's a teaser of what's to come.”

“Here's something that I just created over the weekend.”

And you get access to that.

You also get access to my weekly newsletter, which I put out.

And I give you a deeper dive in what's going on in the Empowered Birth Community as well as what's going on in the Empowered Birth Circle, which is my group of birth workers and what they're creating so that you kind of get everything without having to be on a million different newsletters, and the ones that you are subscribed to are not going to put you astray and have you fall into those Natural Birth Traps.

Because when you're planning a True Natural Birth, you really can't be following the mainstream advice.

So again, thank you so much for reading to the end and if you found this valuable, Pay It Forward.

Happy Empowered Birth Journey!

Namaste,

~Carly

This article is also part 1 of a 27-part series of essential tips for planning your Empowered, True Natural Birth and avoiding some of the most common traps for birth planning and navigating pregnancy. It likely has not escaped your notice that the second you become pregnant you are constantly being “sold to” or otherwise given “advice”. Empowering Moms is different. I don’t tell you what to think, I tell you HOW to think, and how to remain in your power, so that you can trust your intuition and do what’s best for YOU, not what others think is “Best”. The Essential Birth Planning Tips series is designed to help you in your Empowered Birth Journey. If you want to go deeper, or you have any questions, you can comment below or better yet, email the team at hello@empoweringmomsbirth.com.